ICANN: cybersquatting complaints soar to highest level ever

ICANN is on track to open up the top-level domain (TLD) system later this year …

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has postponed its plans to open its generic top-level domain (gTLD) system to assess a second round of feedback. Hot on the heels of that announcement, a new report from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) revealed that cybersquatting complaints rose to their highest level ever in 2008—before anyone could purchase arstechnica.awesome or google.stinks, no less.

WIPO's report, simply titled Record Number of Cybersquatting Cases in 2008, says that it saw 2,329 complaints filed under its Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) in 2008. This is the highest number of complaints ever in a single year, and an eight percent increase over the year before. The report quickly juxtaposes this statistic with ICANN's plans to open up a Pandora's Box of confusing new TLDs, which could possibly include even .exe and .paris. There is big money in opening up these TLDs, as ICANN plans to charge anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 just for the name, and then a $60,000 yearly fee.

The move has drawn the ire of nearly everyone, from the general public to the US government, and now even WIPO. The World Intellectual Property Organization no doubt stands to bear the brunt of initial complaints from trademark holders who would have to scramble to protect their property in ICANN's brave new world. Apparently, very few besides ICANN and a handful of registrars are excited about the prospect of having to buy, protect, and maintain .sucks, .great, and .whatever other domain variations you can think of.

Elsewhere in WIPO's report, the organization offers more statistics about TLD-related disputes and a solution that may at least help expedite future resolutions. Since its conception of the UDRP in 1999, WIPO has received 14,663 complaints related to 26,262 separate domain names. Other interesting stats include English being the most common language (86 percent) of complaints in 2008, and country-code-related TLD (ccTLD, like .fr for France) disputes rising from one percent in 2000 to seven percent in 2007 and 13 percent in 2008—nearly doubling in a single year.

As far as the actual outcomes of these disputes, nearly 30 percent of the complaints were settled without a panel decision in 2008. Of the rest, WIPO's panel—consisting of 285 members from 40 countries—decided in favor of the complainant 85 percent of the time. The remaining 15 percent of complaints were denied, leaving the domain in the hands of its original owner.

To help with what will likely become an exponentially increasing workload, WIPO submitted a proposal to ICANN in December 2008 (PDF link) to lift the requirement of paper distribution for UDRP cases. Besides eliminating a wasteful paper process, WIPO touts the increased efficiency of a UDRP process that goes 100 percent digital. WIPO's "eUDRP Initiative," as it's called, may not prevent ICANN from opening a Pandora's Box of domain names, but it may help to clean up the resulting mess a little more quickly.